Photo Cube Link

Friday, November 25, 2016

Today version 3.9 of cliMate was released.This has a huge performance increase when opening the main screen, up to 30% of the previous time for the more complex scenes, and at least 70% of the previous time for the simpler scenes.So what could take 4 or 5 seconds to open now takes 1 or 2. However, unfortunately and somewhat ironically given the recent Pirate Ship theme, cliMate has been pirated. Because I have to pay for the World Weather Online weather data, this means that people using the pirated version are getting that weather data for free, but because I don't get any money in sales to offset the cost of that data, I am losing money.So, I am giving up. The existing World Weather Online data will continue to be available until March 2017, after the app will continue to work but with the less accurate Open Weather Map data only. There will be no more app development or new versions. It is just not worth the time and effort any more, especially if I am losing money. Thanks, Pirates, you have effectively driven me out of business.It a shame, but I have still enjoyed the development process, and do feel I created something beautiful, and may well continue to develop it privately for my family and friends.

Sunday, September 18, 2016

The Current Temperature started mysteriously disappearing as of this morning! This was due to a change in the World Weather Online service which (annoyingly) changed the way they reported the temperature with no warning whatsoever. Fixed that to use to the way now.

The Use Google Play Services checkbox was not remembering the change.

Currently working on a new Demo video to show the current state, as the old video is well out of date. After that will think about new features and themes, but frankly the sales are barely covering the cost of the weather data at the moment, so not sure how long I will bother.

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Last night version 3.8 of cliMate Animated Weather Widget was released. This has the long awaited new Pirate Theme, with all the usual weather conditions looking out the porthole of a pirate ships cabin onto pitching and rolling seas. Featuring:Moving seaPirate shipsSeagullsSwinging lantern with a candle that flickers in night and sunset scenesMoving steering chain

Like the Town House theme, this consists of many layers of complex animation, so is a lot slower to start the main screen than the other themes, but the widget itself is just as fast and smooth as always.

So what is next?

1. First I want to redo the YouTube demo video for the widget, as it is woefully out of date, and doesn't show any of the new features or themes.

2. There is a new Android PercentageLayout technology available that should let me speed up the main screen considerably, so I will have a look at that next.

3. I want to will take another look at the idea of a 6 hour morning, afternoon, evening and night forecast for a particular day.

4. Then after that start on some new themes maybe, not sure yet which I will turn my attention to, but perhaps something that is a bit less complex than the last few, as they take so long to do. Something which is a variation of the existing Countryside theme would be a lot quicker to do, maybe with a cottage or castle in the foreground.

Friday, July 15, 2016

The new version 3.7.2 was released today. This fixes the Current Location issue on some devices, by allowing Google Play Services to be used to get the location. There is a new Use Google Play Services checkbox in the Set Location settings screen. This will be automatically ticked for Android 6.0+ devices, but you can change that at any time. If its not ticked, it uses the old method of getting the location, which is fine for the vast majority of devices. Just tick the box if you are having trouble getting the location.

Now I will go back to the Pirate Theme, and see if I can speed that up.

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Had several reports that CliMate Animated Weather Widget's current location setting is no longer working on Android 6.0 devices.This is really strange, as it works on some devices, but not all. It works perfectly on my friend's S7 Edge, for example, but not on S7's for several customers who contacted me.It looks like the current CliMate method of getting the location using Android's LocationManager is just no longer reliable on the latest devices running 6.0, even though it should be. So the newer recommended method using Google Play Services is the way to go. A few users having problems have helped me out by running some tester apps that successfully get the location using Google Play Services.At the same time I am moving the development environment from Eclipse to Android Studio, so I can take advantage of the easier way of integrating such newer services. This is not trivial, and has given me a lot of headaches but is the way forward. The new theme such as Townhouse and the forthcoming Pirate theme are pretty slow to start up, because they are using so many layers of views to display the various animations. Using Android Studio, I can start to use some new features such as PercentageLayouts, which will drastically reduce the number of layers I need to show such complex animations. So the next steps:

Convert CliMate to run under Android Studio

Add the new Google Play Services to get the current location

Test and the publish the update so customers having issues get the fix